When it all came down to casting the pivotal role of Katniss Everdeen, the female lead in Suzanne Collins‘ popular book The Hunger Games, it came down to three Academy Award-nominated actresses — not a bad decision to be faced with as a filmmaker.

The final three hopefuls were Abigail Breslin (nominated for Little Miss Sunshine), Jennifer Lawrence (just nominated for Winter’s Bone), and Hailee Steinfeld (also just nominated for her performance in True Grit), but now only one remains. Lionsgate Entertainment has officially announced that Miss Lawrence will be playing the role of Katniss, a 16-year-old girl who participates in an annual event among 12 districts where teenage boys and girls from each district are forced to fight to the death on live TV.

It’s been announced by Lionsgate Films that they’ve set a release date for The Hunger Games, the adaptation of the popular young-adult novel of the same name by author Suzanne Collins.

The movie is set to be released on March 23, 2012, and tells the story of a post apocalyptic future where North America is now known as the country of Panem, where twelve districts are controlled by the government in a city called Capitol. As a punishment, an annual event called the Hunger Games is held, where kids — one boy and one girl from each district within the ages of 12 to 18 — are forced to fight to the death to show that in these brutal times, the controlling government is in power and not even the younger civilians are safe.

The Hunger Games is set to be directed by Gary Ross, who previously helmed Seabiscuit and Pleasantville. Ross has also written Big, Dave, and The Tale of Despereaux along with the two titles mentioned above. Writer Billy Ray (Breach, State of Play) penned the screenplay, but it’s unclear whether his draft will be the one used for filming.

A new Robert F. Kennedy biopic based on the Evan Thomas biography, His Life, is now on the way at New Regency with superstar Matt Damon attached to star.

The film — which is currently untitled — will span a large portion of Kennedy’s life, including earlier days when all of the attention was on his older brother John F. Kennedy, to his rise up into the spotlight as a top political leader, and straight through to his assassination in 1968.

The movie will be directed by Gary Ross and written by Steven Knight. Ross wrote and directed Pleasantville and Seabiscuit, and also wrote Big, Dave, The Tale of Despereaux, and the upcoming remake of Creature from the Black Lagoon.

The whispers around town indicate that Spider-Man 4 writer Gary Ross is currently in discussions with Sony to write, and maybe even direct their planned spin-off movie, Venom. The movie has already had multiple drafts written, including one from Zombieland writing team Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick.

Ross plans to finish up his scrip for Spidey 4 and then move right into the Venom project. All indications so far is that all things we’ve seen from the character will be thrown away, and that this movie will start all over again — including re-casting the role once filled by Topher Grace in the forgettable Spider-Man 3.

Spider-Man 4 is nowhere near its May 2011 release, but Sony isn’t sitting around — the studio has hired James Vanderbilt to write the scripts for both Spider-Man 5 and Spider-Man 6 movies.

Vanderbilt wrote a draft for Spider-Man 4, but director Sam Raimi went out to David Lindsay-Abaire (Robots, Inkheart) for a rewrite on that, and then moved on to grab Gary Ross (Big, Pleasantville) for yet another rewrite.

While Raimi, Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst are all coming back for the fourth installment of the franchise, there have been occasions where it seemed like none would be coming back, so Sony is setting up for the long-haul with Vanderbilt as their screenwriter and fully-prepared to move on to a “franchise reboot” with a new director and stars if the others don’t come back for future chapters.